“I was already gone,” Dunn says. “That farewell thing was a full year just kind of going through the motions. I had already left the building, in a lot of ways. I was off, thinking about songs and other things.”

The end results of those thoughts may be heard on Ronnie Dunn, the most notable aberration this year in commercial country music: a highly anticipated major label solo debut from a 58-year-old artist. For most of the past two years, Dunn has poured his formidable talent and indefatigable energy into the album, which hits stores June 7.

He’s logged thousands of miles visiting radio stations to promote it, and incalculable hours recording, crafting, fretting and generally behaving as if he hadn’t been one of country radio’s most recognizable and praised voices for the past 20 years. As if he hadn’t sold an average of more than 4,000 albums every day since the duo’s debut, Brand New Man, hit stores in August of 1991. As if he wasn’t a sure bet Country Music Hall of Famer.

“Some of it is that psychotic (stuff) that makes you an artist, that insecure unrest that motivates you to keep going when maybe you could have stopped,” he says, speaking over a cicada hum at his spread south of Nashville. “I started to doubt myself, and it’s easy to do that when everyone around you is like, ‘Have you lost your mind?’ ”
As his wife pointed out, he quit a high-paying job with no warning or family discussion (“I just came home from the studio and told my wife, ‘I quit’ ”). Then he went off to Los Angeles and got the word “cowboy” tattooed from his elbow to his wrist. And when he was at home in Nashville, he was running from studio to studio, recording more than 30 songs in an attempt to redefine a career that was already quite well-defined.

“Nothing’s ever easy with Ronnie, and that’s a good thing,” says Clarence Spalding, Brooks & Dunn’s manager for 18 years (he remains the manager for Dunn and for Brooks in their solo endeavors). “Ronnie really thinks things through, some people might say too much. He’s always tinkering, always trying to make it better.”

Dunn had talked with Spalding in the past about wanting to end Brooks & Dunn, but never in a way that suggested urgency. But in the summer of 2009, the two singers found themselves butting heads about song selection. Although this was something they always did when making albums, and the discussion wasn’t particularly heated, Dunn decided then that he was finished with the duo’s constant creative push and pull.

“It was something that came abruptly, but it wasn’t the result of Kix and Ronnie having an argument,” Spalding says. “It was more that it was simply time to quit, and one of them said it.”

Brooks declined an interview request, but he has repeatedly stressed that the breakup was amicable.

The day after the breakup was announced, Spalding and then label chief Joe Galante met with Dunn to determine the next step. Ultimately, they and Brooks decided to release a greatest hits album and to embark on a “Last Rodeo” farewell tour (something to which Dunn only grudgingly agreed). With those plans in place, Dunn began the process of creating a solo career, a process that got more complicated in spring 2010, when Gary Overton replaced Galante.

“Chaos got added to chaos,” Dunn says. “Gary says, ‘I can’t afford to blow this one, buddy. If this (solo album) doesn’t work, we’re all out of jobs.’ We got involved with over-thinking and over-baking. It’s like I jumped and, as I was falling, I was going, ‘Where the hell is the cord to pull?’ At the end of the day, after all that time and effort and anxiety, it comes down to the songs. Always does.”

The first of those songs released to the public is “Bleed Red,” a ballad reminiscent of the 2005 Brooks & Dunn hit “Believe” that has become a Top 10 hit. Overall, the album is neither a xerox of nor a total departure from Brooks & Dunn. Each duo member often recorded what were essentially solo tracks, without harmonies from the other, and Dunn’s resonant voice was most often the defining element of the act’s radio singles. Dunn uses that voice to full effect here, roaring on up-tempo romps “Singer in a Cowboy Band” and “Let the Cowboy Rock” (either of which would have been right at home on a B&D album) and gentler and more empathetic on acoustic-based songs “Cost of Livin’ ” and “Love Owes Me One.”

In full, it is the easily the most cohesive album Dunn has been a part of. But it’s not as simple as merely explaining to longtime Brooks & Dunn fans that they should jump onto Dunn’s solo bandwagon: Members of famous country duos or groups don’t often succeed as solo artists, and no one in modern country music has successfully attempted such a transition after his 40th (or 50th, for that matter) birthday.

“It’s very rare, and you have to have ungodly talent to be able to do it,” says Billboard chart manager Wade Jessen. “But Ronnie is a world-class singer, and he has a very high credibility factor. When you hear him, there are all of those traditional country influences that come spilling out, from Lefty Frizzell to George Jones to Waylon Jennings. The album sounds like a next chapter, not a throwback. And Ronnie is the kind of guy who is going to stay at this, whether his audience is in arenas or coffeehouses.”

Right now, that audience is somewhere in the middle of those extremes. Brooks & Dunn played amphitheaters, but Dunn’s summer tour includes stops at places called The Lumberjack Saloon and Cactus Pete’s rather than big sheds.

“I prefer this,” Dunn says. “I can remember doing stadium shows with (Kenny) Chesney, out there on the stage going, ‘I’d rather be somewhere else. I don’t know if half these people are even aware that I’m here.’ With a show like that, it’s so big that you can’t establish a rapport. You have to rely on massive production to do the lion’s share of the work.”

More than ever, Ronnie Dunn is doing the lion’s share. And his manager isn’t concerned with the bit about the long odds of establishing a solo contemporary country career at 58.

“I don’t know that there’s many solo, contemporary country music careers that have Ronnie Dunn’s voice on ’em,” Spalding says.